{hardware} – Why is my 2011 Mac mini (with an SSD improve) caught on grey display throughout startup?

A colleague of mine gave me an previous Mac mini (mid 2011, 2.5 GHz, mannequin A1347) who needed to return to work primarily for enjoyable.

The Mini got here with out an HDD, so I purchased a brand new SSD (Samsung 870 Evo, 500GB) and put in it contained in the Mac following iFixIt’s information with out issues.

Subsequent, I created a bootable USB flash drive with macOS Excessive Sierra (10.13), which is understood to be appropriate with my mannequin. Nonetheless, when the loading bar beneath the Apple emblem reaches about 70%, my monitor appears to reboot and a grey display seems, and nothing else occurs. I attempted leaving it for just a few hours however nothing modified.

I additionally tried booting from Web Restoration – it efficiently downloads the Web Restoration picture, however after the loading bar reaches ~70%, it will get caught on the identical grey display.

I additionally began Apple Diagnostic (holding d after which Possibility+d throughout startup), run the “lengthy” take a look at and it says no issues discovered.

I additionally tried the next:

• Reset NVRAM and SMC.
• Boot with cmd+possibility+R, cmd+change+possibility+Rand cmd+R (each with Wi-Fi and Ethernet)
• Boot with cmd+Sure to enter single person mode: all the things appears fantastic right here, I run fsck in every /dev/disk* and he tells me that all the things is okay. Then I write exit to proceed the boot course of and will get caught on the identical grey display.
• Boot with cmd+V (i.e. verbose mode), there are not any errors the place it will get caught; as a substitute, the display flashes once more and turns grey endlessly (similar as above).
• I attempted utilizing the bootable USB keep on with different OS variations, akin to Yosemite (10.10), El Capitan (10.11), and Sierra (10.12).
• Linked an HDMI show as a substitute of DisplayPort from the Thunderbolt port.

None of those labored, the Mac at all times will get caught on the grey display. I do not assume it has a discrete GPU, and even when it did, I’ve tried some boot arguments to disable it to no avail.

Is there the rest I can attempt to get this machine working once more?